Faith in Politicians

Like many, I have struggled to digest in recent times particular polling numbers that make little sense, most of all Starmer having worse approval ratings than Liz Truss at the nadir of her era, which to any sane mind, is a completely absurd position. Perhaps it is emblematic of the increasingly centralised times and country we are living in, but it is seemingly true that every issue a community or individual faces, no matter the origin, size or context of the matter, is immediately charged in the face of Westminster. The common narrative of the British electorate that apathy, despondency and a general anodyne state has set in regarding its feeling towards the government has value, but whenever anger is expressed or sets in towards our political procedures, it is much more direct than it has ever been before.  

Politics has become not less important in the public imagination, but more important than ever.  

I too am reminded of how such a similarly deceptive pattern is seen in one of Britain’s most important cultural exports and pastimes. Often I discuss how football still carries such a degree of cultural power, importance and relevance, or whether, like everything in history, it will die and lose its power at some point. However, given all of the other working-class institutions in many British towns have gone - pubs, churches, factories, football has actually acquired even more importance, as it really is the only local institution left. Indeed, whether these institutions can even still be classified as local remains to be said.  

Reflecting a similar dynamic, it is often said that people have lost faith in politicians, as well as the broader political class. This is the exact opposite of what has happened. Admittedly, whilst respect for politicians is at an all-time low, faith in them, is, in a myriad of ways, absurdly high. There has been a post-Covid transition, or perhaps the seeds of this developed before the pandemic, where the general population now seemingly thinks that politicians, or any given leader of politician, should be able to ‘fix’ anything, including matters which are ostentatiously out of their control, encouraged by all of the other levers of power the public once possessed dwindling away. This straddles domestic matters which are devolved from their control, such as communities fuming over matters which reside in local council’s control, not the executive, to being convinced that there are measure we can take to reverse the economic rise of China, or alter and influence the erratic cognitive procedures of Donald Trump.  

The secondary consequences, as well as causes of this, are many. Most of all, a result is a political class that spends an extraordinary amount of time agonising over phrasing, slogans and narratives, often because these are among the few variables still genuinely within its control. A minister, or prime minister for that matter, cannot single-handedly reduce global energy prices, reverse demographic trends, nor end a war which it did not launch or could not end, leading to a vicious cycle where the more they are held responsible for matters out of their control, the more they cower in the face of justifying their other actions. The era of the Cold War, where several key global leaders, most of all Charles de Gauller and the latter end of the Soviet gerontocracy, were aggressively pragmatic in both their actions and their expression of their actions to their populace, is now a distant memory.  

Westminster politicians’ paranoia about saying the perfect concoction of words in a sentence to appease the focus group masses is a big enough problem – but also regarding the inverse, language matters a great deal.